#saw this in the teen titans comic and had to create a post because it's so cute

[celaenaeiln]

Just a compilation of nicknames heroes call Dick because it's cute, fun, and they're close.

"Morning Glory"

Teen Titans (1966) Issue #4

"Boy Wonder"

Teen Titans (1966) Issue #5

To be honest though EVERYONE calls Dick that from Villains (Joker, Lex Luthor, Sivian, etc) to all the heroes.

"Nighty"

The New Teen Titans (1984) Issue #8

"Boy Planner"

Teen Titans (1966) Issue #11

"Robin-o"

Teen Titans (1966) Issue #11

"Boy wonderful"

Teen Titans (1966)

"Robbin-bobbin" and "our peerless leader"

Teen Titans (1966)

"Robbie"

The New Teen Titans Issue #1

"Boy genius"

Teen Titans (1966) Issue #14

"Dear hearts"

Teen Titans (1966) Issue #16

"Robin-bobbin"

Teen Titans (1966) Issue #17

Another just cause the whole scene is cute

Which is also funny because they used this a lot in old comics but this also happened to Dick-

Batman (1940) Issue #129

I wonder if Dick thinks of this every time they call him that lol

"Leaderman"

Teen Titans (1966) Issue #22

shortpants

"N.W."

JLA (1997) Issue #121

"Bluebird"

Outsiders (2006) Issue #49

Owen Mercer - Boomerang

"NW" (again but this time by Roy)

Batman Plus

"Bird boy"

Outsiders (2003) Issue #34

[trexiejan]

I have a theory that Tom Taylor copied/took a lot of inspirations from Dickkory.

I may or may not be wrong but I just can't help but notice the timing and the similarities. A lot of things in dickbabs relationship are not very original at all. Most of the time they just steal concept from other couples.

Now going back to Tom, I suspect he was in a lot of social media apps (twitter, reddit, instagram etc) and secretly lurked in nightwing fandom groups and have read their posts and conversations etc. including about dickkory.

1. The concept of visiting his parents' grave

This panel of Kory and Dick showing up in his parents graveyard was shared in the Nightwing subreddit 1 month ago. How come 1 month later Tom wrote a similar thing for Dick and Babs?

Also notice Dick told Kory "You shouldn't be here" but Tom wrote Dick telling Babs "Thanks for coming here" it seems to me Tom really saw the kory comic and wanted to make the dialougue different for dickbabs to make them look better.

2. The concept of wearing each other's superhero costumes.

This fanart of dick and kory exchanging costumes was created by Laurarts on March 4, 2024, it went viral on twitter and it was also shared on the nightwing subreddit.

How come 1 month later Tom Taylor wrote that Dick and Babs wear each other's costumes too in Nightwing #113 that was published in April 17, 2024. 💀.

3. The concept of being freaky

Now my suspicions of Tom stalking and copying Dickkory content was solidified when he literally posted this gif of Dickkory from the DCAMU, notice how Dick and Babs started acting horny and freaky in his run after he tweeted this and Babs started teasing Dick and making sexual jokes to him like Kory does to Dick in the dcamu. 💀💀💀

4. The concept of A crowd of heroes watching them.

I remember a year ago I posted this screenshot of an article discussing the original plan for dickkory in reply to a thread where Tom Taylor got tagged by the person i was talking to. The person was a dickbabs shipper who insisted NTT dickkory was bound to fail, I told OP it's not true, i showed her this screenshot of the article that discussed the original wedding plan for dick and kory and where it also says a crowd of heroes would watch Dick and Kory. How come a few months later Tom Taylor wrote this dickbabs wedding scene in his run and made a crowd of heroes watch dickbabs too??? 💀

5. Wally being a shipper

This panel of Wally in Teen Titans Academy #9 being a Dickkory shipper was published in December 14, 2021, how come a few months later, Tom Taylor wrote Wally being a dickbabs shipper in Nightwing #91 (April 19, 2022). Wally felt ooc because he never once talked about dickbabs before tom wrote him in his book💀

6. The concept of a woman teaching Dick to be more than just a hero

Seriously, Kory already taught him this 😭 She was literally the reason why he didn't become a Batman 2.0, He already learned the whole "you can be more than just a hero and be in a happy relationship" lesson from Kory.

But Tom Taylor just had to bring him back to square 1 so he can make Barbara say this to him too, making her act like Kory 💀 it's funny cuz Barbara never acted like this before, don't forget she was the one who keep rejecting him and making him feel bad for trying to be happy before 💀💀💀

So yeah sorry if i'm being annoying about this, I might be wrong but even if i'm wrong it still doesn't make dickbabs original since dickkory writers and fanartist did these concepts first.

and tom taylor is known to be an obsessed dickbabs shipper who tried to have beef with dickkory shippers on twitter so copying dickkory content as a form of secret revenge sounds like something he would do 😬

[sabrinatvband]

Notes on Comic Art #3: Dynamicism [again]

I've recently been devouring Tim Eldred's writings. Eldred is not a very famous artist, but you're almost certainly familiar with his work. He's been a storyboard artist and / or director on Extreme Ghostbusters, Avengers EMH, Teen Titans (2003), and every Spider-Man show beginning with TNAS, as well as many, many other shows.

But before primarily becoming a board artist, Eldred worked in the comics industry. He did a lot of work on anime/manga-inspired comics, and was a staff artist at Malibu Comics for a few years.

One of the many odd-jobs he did in his career was create art for a few of those Christopher Hart "how to draw X" books you've probably seen. Don't worry, Eldred has credibility; he thinks the books are shit and he only accepted the work to make ends meet. But he thinks an example of good comicbook storytelling that he did for one of Hart's books mostly holds up, if you ignore the writing Hart added around his examples.

I recommend you read Eldred's post about this first, and then come back around here to read my own commentary.

An entire book drawn like this first example would eventually start to feel like those comics laid out by Jim Shooter. Shooter's comics are a many notches above this, but the effect of having few dynamics would basically be the same.

Eldred says he constantly saw direct downshots in pages from beginners during portfolio reviews. I don't think Eldred is lying, but the weird thing is that I can't recall ever seeing a direct downshot in a comic. I guess it's because none of those beginners ever got published. Either way, I do agree that it's an awkward, mechanical angle. There might be an occasion where it's the correct choice, but I can't imagine when that might be.

Anyways, Eldred was trying to make a point by having these pages use six panel grids; he's implying they're boring. I think Hamm's rebuttal to this POV is the best one I've ever read:

Varying the size and shape of panels or their points-of-view doesn't "add drama," it adds visual interest. And narrative is more important than visual interest. Some of the most gripping comics have mostly same-sized panels: Watchmen, V, Toth's work, much of Los Bros Hernandez, not to mention most comic strips.

You can also throw in Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, and many other gold / silver age artists. The Dark Knight Returns is built using a sixteen panel grid.

There are many other things that can be said about this "worst" example, but my final comment is that the first, fourth, and sixth panels of the first page, and the first panel of the second page, are all completely fine. I'd even argue that there's nothing really wrong with the third panel of the second page. The big problem with most of these panels is that they lazily flatten objects that could've had depth, mostly cars, and I don't really see that problem in the ones I mentioned [aside from 1-4, but that's appropriate].

Here's what Eldred calls the "intermediate" example. Something we start to see here is figures breaking out of panels. Once again, Jesse Hamm has something to say:

Panel borders are a symbol that helps the story move swiftly and clearly. Like punctuation. Each time you break them, letting figures or objects jut out of them, you slightly erode their effectiveness. You can break them occasionally to good effect…but broken often, they lose power, and it looks gimmicky. Be judicious!

I think all of the panel breaks across these two pages are not only completely superflous, but they're also actively detrimental to the artwork. Especially the one in the second panel, which makes the left side of that panel feel more tangent-y than it would otherwise.

I have a lot of problems with the following quote from Eldred:

The big panel in the center is what I later learned to call a “three-quarter downshot.” I learned the term once I made the jump into TV animation and found out that (like the direct downshot) it was a common default angle for storyboards. Everyone used it without understanding what a cliche it was. You almost never see it live-action filmmaking, for example. Once it was beaten out of us, we all learned how to find better alternatives. But until you get that training, you just think of it as a helpful way to convey geography.

Once again, I don't doubt that some people in the storyboarding world think that the "three-quarter downshot" is bad. But it's perfectly fine for comics. There are two reasons you don't often see this kind of shot in live action filmmaking:

-It requires either a crane or a cameraman moving onto a building. One of those things is expensive, and both of them eat up a lot of time, which is always in short supply in filmmaking.

-Because live action filmmaking is live action, our eyes are always being bombarded with a lot of information. It takes too much time for a viewer to spot the relevant figure in a three-quarter downshot composition, and so it's mostly useless in live action.

In comics, budget is not a problem, and time works differently so a reader can have a second to discover where the relevant figure is standing. There are some comics, like RoboCop vs The Terminator, that would've been served quite well by a few three-quarter downshots, because they don't do enough to convey geography.

It's worth mentioning that the first example uses 12 panels to convey what the second example conveys in 9. I haven't said it outright yet, but aside from the panel breaking stuff, I do think the second example is better than the first.

Anyways, here's the "advanced" example:

Whenever I see a book dominated by compositions like this, I always make the same mental note: I'm not reading this. The actual mental note is more of a This artist lacks discernment and this is visually incoherent, but the end result is that I'm still not going to read it. My eyes immediately glaze over; it's too much work to parse the tilted panels and constant panel breaks. Everything is cranked up to 11 and I have no time for any of it.

Canted angles work just fine when the composition is canted while the panel borders are normal; that's easy to understand. But I don't enjoy this Gene Colan-type stuff. This is why I've never read Spawn, or a lot of newer manga.

While I was reading Eldred's post, I kept expecting him to say something to the effect of "You should mix and match stuff from these different levels, because the loud 'advanced' example is not always appropriate", but he never says that. Maybe he just didn't think it needed to be said?

What are the lessons here? Sometimes good artists give bad advice, and sometimes people can try so hard to be cutting-edge and smart that they get in their own way.

Let's look at one last thing, a similar demonstration from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. There are a lot of things that can be said about how much of the advice in How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way is destructive, but let's just ignore that larger discussion for now.

Obviously the left page is the boring, non-Marvel page, and the right page is the Marvel page. Notice how much more dynamic the Marvel page is without changing the panel grid, or breaking any borders. Dynamics, in many cases, really does come down to using high or low angles and creative blocking / composition. And, once again, there are instances where some of the panels on the left page might be more desirable than compositions on the Marvel one; context is key.

Varying the size and shape of panels or their points-of-view doesn't "add drama," it adds visual interest. And narrative is more important than visual interest.

[soft-spot-for-speedsters]

I posted 3,171 times in 2022

That's 2,492 more posts than 2021!

25 posts created (1%)

3,146 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@givemewallywestorgivemedeath

@dailydccomics

@cassarson

@comatose--overdose

@frostbittenbucky

I tagged 107 of my posts in 2022

#blue beetle - 5 posts

#👀 - 5 posts

#jaime reyes - 4 posts

#dc - 3 posts

#ohhhhhh i love this one - 3 posts

#batman the brave and the bold - 3 posts

#static shock - 3 posts

#episode list - 2 posts

#static shock (tv) - 2 posts

#impulse - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#im reblogging this here bc one such character i use as a dc oc and this is pretty spot on. shes the one in the story i reblogged a few days

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Jaime Reyes - Blue Beetle in Batman TBATB

So like, don't get me wrong, i have loved DC for years. I got stuck on the og Teen Titans cartoon when i was younger and never really got out of DC after that. I would catch episodes here and there of Batman shows or Justice League. (100% had a gay ass crush on Shayera/Hawkgirl and Raven before i even realized i was bi - not the point though.) Anyways, I remember aside from the Teen Titans though i never caught much interest, and certainly did not stay super interested in the Batman family, etc.

i still watched them, but aside from Raven and Beast Boy, i never had much of a focus. And i kind of loved them in a similar vain to a lot of my other interests. And then it happened, thinking back on it, I actually think it was the first episode drop, not any sort of rerun, that I saw the first episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Which is called "Rise of the Blue Beetle" and introduces us to Jaime Reyes. It was over immediately - little 7 year old me absolutely LOVED Blue Beetle. Like, he became my favorite character, or at the most, more information stuck about him than even Teen Titans, though stubborn me refused to admit it because little me did not like changing favorites.

Years later, I remember basically nothing about Batman: TBATB, EXCEPT for Jaime Reyes and the Scarab (Khaji Da). it was my first introduction to the character and he stuck, to the point that years later I could still basically recount the first episode from memory.

Anyways, like I said, I never really got too much into Batman - though I fell in love with Flash from JL/JLU and that spiraled into my love for the speedsters, just, like, period. (They're my favorite family). However, i have been on a binge regarding Blue Beetle content, and I also owe it to him for introducing me to my tied favorite character, Bart Allen (Impulse). When Young Justice came out and i found out about it, the driving force behind me watching it was that I heard Blue Beetle ended up in it and i was sold, which then introduced me to Impulse and i started learning more on my own and then deep dived further down the rabbit hole of speedster lore.

While Bart is currently INCREDIBLY high on my favorites list, like, first place, he is tied with Jaime/Khaji Da (and will be because i have a special place for my favorite beetle boy).

I never got the chance prior to get heavy into comics that were DC - Marvel? Sure. But ask anyone that knows me and they'll tell you I know nothing about it.

There is not a really big point to this - I was just finally driven to watch the entire B:TBATB series (thank you @frostbittenbucky, and I was originally gonna watch only the episodes focusing of Jaime and the one with Bronze Tiger, but decided to actually watch all in case BB made any appearances).

i legit just wanted to dump about Jaime because I just finished "Fall of the Blue Beetle" and just, uhhhh, yeah.

37 notes - Posted September 1, 2022

#4

Hey so I saw @givemewallywestorgivemedeath posting about Bart from the new episode and made a comment off my main....

Now this exists

Guys, I am terrified to know what's going down, rip

Y'all coulda left him alone!! Wasn't taking Wally enough!!

See the full post

38 notes - Posted May 12, 2022

#3

So for those that have not heard the song - this is "The Ballad of Barry Allen" by Jim's Big Ego!

And for those of you that maybe have heard it but didn't realize - the lead of the band, Jim Infantino, is actually the nephew of the man responsible for the look of Barry Allen, Carmine Infantino! (Fun fact, according to Jim, Carmine drew the cover for their Album, Jim's brother did the inks, and Jim did the coloring/layout).

Carmine was also responsible for helping bring to life a few other characters - such as Elongated Man, Black Canary, Batgirl (Barbra), and Dead Man, and Christopher Chance (2nd iteration of the Human Target).

67 notes - Posted October 23, 2022

#2

Batman Unburied

So, I found this in my Spotify recommended the other day. Apparently Warner and Spotify teamed up to make it and it started posting on the 3rd it looks like. There are 10 episodes as of my typing this out.

But I figured some of y'all might like it and I haven't actually seen anyone talking about it. Here's some more info on the series.

See the full post

72 notes - Posted June 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Oh, shout out to @frostbittenbucky who was painting at my apartment the other day.

And like, 5 mins after telling me to "trust the process" as I expressed displeasure with how it was coming out (tho I was enjoying smacking the canvas with brushes, and kept saying "tap, tap, tap") looked over when I was done with the grass and exclaimed in a very surprised tone "it actually looks good!"

This isn't a call out, I just started cracking up about it again while I was looking over the current progress.

89 notes - Posted August 4, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Note from me: @cassarson was actually my first follower on this blog - I see you! Thank you! Also I met one of my coolest friends thanks to this blog when I followed hers (@frostbittenbucky). I still think it was funny how long it took you to connect my main blog with this DC one smh.

[spider-jaysart]

I have a few questions!

do you have any characters that you don't know very much about or nothing but you see their design and you're like "oh you're cool, I want to know more!"

are there any characters that you love but you don't draw as much as you'd like/want to draw more (I love your art by the way, I always added to my queue, which is too long rn, sorry!)

do you have any OC characters or head canon you've kept to yourself (till now!)

@batboyblog

1. Yes! That's definitely something that's happened to me before sometimes!

I remember when it happened to me with Harley Quinn when I saw her in a newspaper photo for the first Suicide Squad movie when it was still supposed to be coming soon in theaters and I didn't know who she exactly was at the time, but she caught my attention cause she looked like a really fun character! And it also happened with Captain Marvel too when I saw her suit in the MCU's Captain Marvel movie, cause I thought that her suit looked really cool, but then I didn't really like her that much later on after learning what her character was like in the modern comics. There's some other ones that I found out about too just by seeing their cool designs but I can't remember most of them right now

2. Yeah, there are some characters that I love but don't get to draw all the time

Like: the Teen titans group from the original animated series (Robin, Starfire, Beast boy, Raven, Cyborg, sometimes Terra), but I definitely would used to always draw them a lot and I would used to always fill my sketchbooks and notebooks up with them!💗 I still draw them sometimes though, just not a lot like I used to

And also, thank you very much!✨ It brings me millions of joy to know that you love my art!!✨💗✨

3. Yeah, I have ocs, a lot of them actually lol, original ones for original stories, horror ocs for an old fandom I used to be in but later left, I also have some DC one's but they're mostly old ones, I only have a couple of new DC ones that I created last year, which are just mostly civilian and villain ocs. The old DC ones were next gen teenage Teen Titan ocs who are the kids of the one's from the original animated series

I'll probably reveal the old Teen titans next gen ones in a separate post in the future

And for headcanons..... Hmmmm🤔....

When Jon was a toddler, he would used to carry the little Ladybugs that he would find outside on the farm in his pockets and put them in a jar to keep, with little holes made on the top of the jar for them to breath, though because of the breathing holes that were made for them on the top of the jar, they all escaped and were crawling all over the kitchen together in a group in the morning and scared Lois while she was making breakfast for the family. Clark, after quickly coming into the kitchen due to the loud scream that had came from his wife, saw them all too and Jon, who had also heard her, came down the stairs from his room and was shocked to see that all his pet Ladybugs had escaped from the jar he had kept them in

Clark quickly put them back outside, getting rid of them all and explained to Jon, who was very sad about losing his little ladybug pets, that he can't be collecting bugs and be bringing them into the house, cause they're little creatures that belong outside with nature. After that, Jon realized that it probably wasn't a good idea and apologized for bringing them into the house

Harley Quinn loves to listen to 80's music sometimes

When Clark and Lois were both young and were still just dating, they would both always go out together for ice cream soda. It's something that they still do in the present, especially with the kids now, Jon, Chris, and Kon

Thanks for the ask! :D

🎉🎉And also, Happy New Year!🎉🎉

[audhdspeedsters]

I saw a post going around DC tumblr yesterday and it gave me the spite I needed to write this meta that I’ve been sitting on for a while. I will have the comics I use here listed at the bottom of this post.

Fact is, Kara calling Kon an abomination in the New 52 makes sense for that version of him as well as her Kryptonian upbringing.

Now before you jump to conclusions about what I’m about to say, we need to have a bit of a history lesson. A Kryptonian history lesson. Over 200,000 years ago, the Kryptonians perfected cloning and started keeping three clones in stasis of all Kryptonians so that there would be the ability to replace failing body parts or protect people from injury. Apparently, this went off without a hitch for 100,000 years because 100,000 years later (making this happen about 100,000 years ago), there was a 1000 year war as to whether or not this was ethical and whether these clones should count as individual people with rights [1]. There is SO much more that happens in this (including an Oedipus plot??) and afterwards that eventually leads to the explosion of Krypton, but this is the minimum needed for this post.

Now at this point in time, Kon is a genetically modified clone of the CEO of Cadmus Industries. While he isn’t a direct clone, which makes him differ from the clones of the clone banks of Krypton already, his purpose for existing is not to help heal or aid in the health of his genetic source. These things are enough to mark him as different from your standard Kryptonian clone. 

We also know that the issue where Kon gets his name originally specifically hails back to this specific Superman origin and history of Krypton as there are visual and factual call backs to it [2]. One of these callbacks is a Kryptonian Genetic Matrix. Specifically, the one in which Clark was created [1]. As we move forward in the versions of Kon to Teen Titans (2003) by Geoff Johns, we see Kon move even closer towards the idea of a Kryptonian child and further from the idea of clone [3]. He is revealed and retconned to be the son of Lex and Clark.

Now there is no meaning of the name Kon given until the New 52 except for the history of the second house of El and the relation of Clark’s who had the name before the explosion of Krypton [2]. In the New 52, Kon is given a meaning. ‘Abomination’. This name is given to him by Kara when they meet and she lashes out at him [4].

However, in the New 52 Kon is completely different, he is no longer Clark and Lex’s combined clone. He is a clone of Jon Lane Kent. A clone created to get stable genetic material to save Jon’s destabilizing body [5]. This is a complete shift of both Kon’s purpose  and his genetic makeup. This shift firmly places him within the idea of clone that was prevalent on Krypton. The type of clone that caused a war that lasted a 1000 years. A war that the fallout of destroyed Krypton. To Kara, who grew up on Krypton, and would have learned of this war in her history books, Kon was representative of the entire reason she no longer had her home. 

I want it to be noted that we don't always equate names with their meaning. We may pick them because of that, or we may pick them because they belong to relatives as we see with Kon before the New 52. I was unable to find a source for the popular meaning of Kon pre-New 52, “family of choice.”

This is all to say that there is Kryptonian canon and history that is acknowledged even in the New 52 (shocking for the New 52 I know) that explains these behaviors and contextualizes these names and meanings.

[1] Action Comics (1938) Annual #2

[2] Superboy (volume 4) # 59

[3] Teen Titans (2003)

[4] Superboy (Volume 6) #6

[5] Superboy (Volume 6) #19

[x-imy23]

Tim Drake is Bi

I don’t usually post my personal thoughts on this account but I really need to get this off my chest. 

So...Tim Drake, the third Robin, came out as bi in Batman: Urban Legends #6 (UL). Technically, he has not assigned any labels to himself yet but both the writer and her creative team as well as DC official accounts have confirmed he’s queer.

Tim is my favorite character, I grew up reading his comics and I think him being bi fits his character very well. Personally, I've always considered him queer (like many others) and I find Tim's exploration in UL very realistic, it reminds me of my bi awakening. However, I have seen a lot of people hating on this news and being very toxic about it. This is very sad and also frustrating since most of their arguments are pretty weak in my opinion so I’m going to address the points that bother me the most.

1. Tim has only dated girls before and never showed any signs of liking boys in the 30yrs that his character has been around.

Let me make it clear: even though Tim has only dated girls in the past, it was never explicitly stated that he was straight, people just assumed and times weren't as progressive when Tim's character was created so writers wouldn't have been able to write him as queer even if they wanted to. Furthermore, as hinted before, a lot of people already believed he was queer and it can be argued that there’s a lot of subtext in previous comics making Tim a queer-coded character. His relationship with Conner (Superboy) is the most talked about in regards to the queer subtext. When Conner died, Tim took his death very hard to the point that he tried cloning him 99 times (Teen Titans Vol 3 #34). At the time, Tim had also lost his father, Bart, his girlfriend Stephanie and Bruce. Out of all of those deaths, he really seems to have taken Conner’s the hardest even over his girlfriend's. Tim even changed the colours of his costume as a tribute to Conner. 

Another iconic scene can be found in Graduation Day #5 (2003) where Tim and Conner are in a closet which was seen as ambiguous by many readers to the extent that even the writer Judd Winnick replied to a Tweet saying that he saw it as the opportunity for them to come out of the closet. 

Even in the New 52 reboot where their past relationship was erased, there are quite a few instances that can be read through the queer subtext. Most notoriously, in the 2015 Teen Titans run in the annual #1 and Teen Titans #12. In the latter, Tim is basically having a breakdown trying to stop Conner going back to the villain Harvest. It’s very emotional.

And let’s not forget when Tim joined a pride parade in Teen Titans #24 (2015). 

One of my favourite instances is the one in Batman Detective Comics #967 when Tim is the only one remembering Conner. 

 2. Why can’t they create new characters or use a character already established as part of the LGBT community?

I think him being a well established character and one of the Robins is a massive deal for representation. Side characters or even new ones often don't receive any spotlight or the right recognition but DC are making a stronger statement with such an important IP like Robin.  Also, bi men usually get less representation compared to bi women and while DC already has bi characters like Constantite or the recently introduced Ghost Maker, it can’t be denied that they don’t have the same popularity as Robin. 

Furthermore, Robin is also an already loved and well-rounded character with many stories behind him and I feel this could help readers identify with him more easily. I really think Tim is a perfect choice, not only because of the instances mentioned in the previous point, but also because he’s been seen questioning his place as well as his identity as a superhero a lot in recent comics which can also be seen as a hint foreshadowing the exploration of his sexuality.  

 3. This coming out is forced. They are changing a character’s sexuality to appease the Twitter crowd. Why do they have to talk about a character's sexuality?

As I established in point 1, nowhere in 32ish years was confirmed that Tim was straight. Even if readers have enjoyed Tim’s stories for decades, he's still canonically a teenager and traditionally this is the age when people start exploring their sexuality so questioning himself is not unrealistic at all. Personally, I think it was done very well in UL and I’m sure that many readers have had a similar experience. It also doesn't mean that Tim’s sexuality was "changed". Sexuality is a complex thing and people can take years to discover themselves. Tim being bi doesn't change what is great about the character nor does it erase his past relationships and experiences. 

The people complaining forget that being straight is also a sexuality so why it is okay for a character to allude to a straight relationship but not to a queer one unless those people are being hyprocrits? And the hypocrisy doesn’t end there if we think about the bi women characters those same people are okay with (e.g.  Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman). And for straight people who say it's forced, think: how long have we had heteronormativity forced down our throat? In this particular case, you don’t have to go that far, just think about the Batman and Robin relationship. This relationship was considered queer-coded very early on when the characters where created to the point that DC intruduced the first incarnation of Batwoman as a potential love interest for Batman and later pushed for the the first Robin, Dick Grayson, to have a playboy persona on par with his father figure to try and placate conservative readers.

4. Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown. Why did they break up off panel? Why break them up at all? They only broke them up to make Tim queer.

Stephanie Brown aka Spoiler aka Robin aka Batgirl has been Tim Drake’s main love interest for many years. Many people love this relationship, me included. However, I can’t deny that there are some things that make me think that maybe they are not that good for each other like the power imbalance that comes through in some comics, especially the earlier ones. Sometimes it also feels like her character only exists to give meaning to the men around her which is sad since her character has a lot of potential but it is often left aside. 

That said, Tim has not denied his love for Stephanie in UL and him being bi does not invalidate what they had in the past or can still have in the future. In regards to their break up, a lot of people feel that it was out of the blue or that there was no need for it since he’s bi. I admit that they could have handled it a little bit better BUT it’s also true that Tim’s been going through some personal discoveries. This can be very overwhelming and some people may prefer dealing with that on their own first and even turn away from the people who love you the most. 

In UL #6, Tim even admits that he broke up with Stephanie for no reason but it’s also true that Tim has always put others’ needs before his own (see how he became Robin in the first place) so I don’t think it’s far-fetched that he now wants to deal with figuring himself out on his own. It was long overdue in my opinion. This doesn't mean that Tim and Stephanie’s relationship won’t be addressed later on. Let’s consider the fact that Urban Legends #6 is not the last we’ll see of Tim but this chapter of his story has just begun so there’s still a lot to be explored and even though many people considered this move by DC to be a form of money grub (let's be real, what isn't these days), it can still be good for representation if done right. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I want to end by saying that whatever your opinion is on the matter, there is no excuse for hate. You can still be respectful of other people’s opinions and if not, just move on with your life. Trust me, you’ll live longer if you don’t poison yourself with hate and there are things far more important than a comic character coming out on which you can spend your energy on. 

Thank you.

[fill-me-with-your-memes-daddy]

Watching the Rise of the Titans movie and I'll be documenting all of my thoughts/reactions here. [Spoiler Warning]

So instead of reblogging every new update, I'm just going to have this post up on my phone as I watch and type my reactions in a bullet list format.

Nari's human disguise is so cute. As someone who does have a cottagecore aesthetic, I want to cosplay her so bad

Are Skrael and/or Belroc non-binary coded? Regardless, I'm also obsessed and I want to fuck Skrael and be Belroc.

STEVE CARING ABOUT JIM BEING HURT YESSSS!!! My god his redemption has probably been one of the greatest there is because he doesn't just suddenly go from being a bully to a completely good person. You can see the gradual shift in learning better throughout the shows which is awesome.

IN NEW YOOOOOOORRRRRRRK!!!!!! CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!

The mugshot montage reminded me of season 1 of trollhunters when toby and Jim were arrested at the museum.

STRICKLER PUT A RING ON IT??? HE'S THE ONLY DILF IVE EVER ACTUALLY AGREED WAS HOT WYM I CAN'T HAVE HIM??? well I'm still really happy about his arc over the series probably one of my favorite character growths.

Eli my guy got his growth spurt!!! As an 18 year old who is still 5'0", I'm happy but envious for him

So I went into this movie without watching any trailers or promo, but I doubt anything could have prepared me for the existence of mpreg. In fact, I wasn't going to document my reactions until I saw that.

NAMURA!!!!!!!!! MY BELOVED!!!!!! I CAN STILL THIRST FOR YOU WITHOUT GUILT

The coach teacher just called the kids zoomers so I have to dock one point from my final rating just because of that. Unforgivable

Those husky animation models suck lmao

Oh fuck the titans got power ranger zords!!

God why did they include the mpreg??? This movie would have been perfect without it.... After that plot point being revisited only one time I'm already beyond done with it

Like it's bringing me back to the v*ltron days where they're was a suspiciously high amount of klance omegaverse and mpreg fics and art created and it physically hurts because Steve and Keith's voice actor is the same person meaning this is especially cursed to me since I was unfortunately in the v*ltron fandom and remember all of that

But like on another note, how old are these characters again??? I haven't checked any wikis because of spoilers but is Steve an adult??? I know aja might be technically a lot older than 18 because alien but is whatever age she is equivalent to an adult as far as emotionally and physically in Akaridion development??? IS THIS A TEEN (M)PREGNANCY IN A KIDS SHOW????

Like bruh I saw a singular post on here before going into the movie that was like "rott spoilers without context" and there was a pregnant belly but I was absolutely not expecting the actual context of it. I'll find the post after I finish and edit this post to tag the creator right here: @makoden

This entire post is just gonna be me ranting about mpreg huh

Anyway I love the whole roundtable allusion to the legends of king arthur (not the toa version but the one he's based off)

THERE'S 3 TO 5 BABIES????? I need to take a break bruh this is just too much

Alright I've taken a 30 minute break got some food and did some things i love (decompressed by tactile stimming with some owl plushies and watched some videos on my favorite owl, Garu. He lives in Japan with his owner and is a domesticated eagle owl who basically just acts like a sky cat. If anyone else needs some eye bleach, here is their YouTube channel)

Blinky and ARRRGHHH!!! saying their "if one of us doesn't make it" talk my god one of them is going to die I can see it and I will be utterly crushed. Jim can't lose another father figure and Toby can't lose his wingman again I will riot if this happens

On a similar but unrelated to the movie note, can we just talk about how toa started with Jim having 0 dads and (if strickler and blinky live to the end) will end with 2 dads? Like I just really feel happy for him that he has two dads who actually figured out how to put the past behind them to not have any infighting between them so that both of them are healthy father figures. Jim has already been through literal hell and back losing his actual humanity in the process so if he loses one of them, I'm going to be really pissed because at this point, this is just Jim torture porn. Y'all know how as SpongeBob SquarePants went on, the show just became Squidward torture porn? It's starting to feel that way for toa and I really hope they cut the shit by the ending

Jlaire is such a good ship but like I feel like it's too perfect they never disagree with each other

YESSSSSSS Someone finally doesn't treat toby like a fat waste of space who messes stuff up!!! I think out of all the characters that would have been most deserving of a rewrite, it's Toby. Sometimes I just feel he's only comic relief and any heartfelt moments he's had in the series was also born of stupidity (ie his flour baby project being unharmed was seen by him as divine intervention from his parents but was actually just Eli and Steve behind the scenes).

Ohhhhh yesssssss Archie's father!!! I was hoping I'd see him again because we got so little of him last

Ooooooooooh Asian trollmarket!!!!!

Oh never mind slavery trollmarket

Bruh titanic camelot

I feel like we're not seeing enough of the villains because I completely forgot about the power ranger zord things

NAMORA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY LAST CRUSHHHH

STRICKLER NO NOT YOU TOO PLEASE

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE ONLY TWO CHARACTERS I SIMP FOR ON THIS SHOW DIED WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF EACH OTHER

THAT WHOLE ASS RANT I WROTE IS COMING TRUE FUCK THIS MOVIE THIS SERIES IS JUST JIM TORTURE PORN

WAIT JIM'S SPERM DONOR INFO?

Oh thank God I don't want to know anything about that person

For the record, I call that man Jim's sperm donor because he has no business being called a father to him. All he did was donate some swimmers to the creation of him and give him abandonment issues

Oh another blind troll elder???? This fucker is just if vendel was a bad guy

Bruh I was grieving

PACIFIC RIM WITH GUN ROBOT VEX AND THE BELROCZORD? I've never seen that movie but I know the reference

Bruh Blinky doesn't read horoscopes? Does he realize conspiracy theories are just the manly version of horoscopes?

NO DON'T KILL VEX STOP KO-ING FOUND FAMILY MEMBERS

Oh thank God he's okay

NO NOT ARCHIE AND CHARLEMAGNE OH MY GOD

oh never mind they're just gonna coup de tat I believe in them :))

But I want to see him again

But I'm glad to see vex

Yay they're in arcadia!

But yeah I wondered why the trolls and Merlin didn't keep the whole "daylight doesn't hurt trolls" feature from the eternal night but now Guillermo del Toro I see you were playing the long con in that just to kill my girl Namora :(((

Oooooh I love the animation of the Narizord over Chihuahua!! It looks very good and realistic (if only they could have put some of that into those huskies from before smh)

Bruh the character designs of the arcane order are so good I want to be them

Nari making sure the Skraelzord doesn't crush the bus

DAMN DOUBLE HOMICIDE

Bruh I'm just glad we finally have an answer on why arcadia had everything going on as opposed to literally anywhere else!! I always found that as a weird coincidence for plot convince.

BRUH WERE BACK TO THE MPREG IM SO JEALOUS I FORGOT ABOUT THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS GRIEVING THE LOSS OF MY LOVELIES.

Oh that's real convenient that the ninth configuration meant all of them. Way to not decide which character gets more attention. Though it probably was a smart way to not have any infighting in the fandom between each character's stan group.

Bruh I just realized where is Barbera did they just ditch her on the Camelot ship???

And where are the other trolls that migrated at the end of trollhunters s3? They said something about new jersey but obviously Jim and the other main characters got on Camelot instead.... This feels like a plot hole

And we never learned the process of how changelings are made and bonded to humans and stuff. We just know it's super painful but I'm curious ffs!!!!

THE DONT THINK BECOME HERO SPEECH ALL SAID TOGETHER!!!

BRUH THEY REALLY HAD TO SHOW HIM GIVING BIRTH??????? WAS THAT AN ABSOLUTE MUST??????

Plus the main audience for this series is little children (the rating for the movie is literally TV-Y7) so even though my adult ass is not in the target audience, I STILL DONT UNDERSTAND WHY WOULD MPREG AND ANAL BIRTH WOULD BE AN IMPORTANT THING TO 7 YEAR OLDS???? THIS IS A LITERAL FETISH HIDDEN IN KIDS CONTENT ITS ELSAGATE ALL OVER AGAIN Y'ALL 😭😭😭😭😭

Though it's probably hypocritical of me to think fetishes don't belong in kids tv when I've openly admitted to thirsting for strickler and namora

HUZZAH

NEW AMULET WAZ GOOD????

STAB THAT BITCH JIM

WAIT NO I SAID STAB NOT GET STABBED

Alright good job just missed the directions at first but you fixed it

SEVEN KIDS?????????

T O B Y ????????????

W A I T NO

N O

IS HE ACTUALLY

OH MY GOD THERE'S HOPE

NO THERE ISN'T

F U C K THIS SHIT THEY REALLY JUST HAD HIM TO BE BULLIED THEN KILLED

Y'ALL IM ACTUALLY CRYING THIS NEVER HAPPENS

I NEVER ACTUALLY GET SO EMOTIONAL OVER MEDIA THAT I CRY IT ONLY HAPPENED ONCE AT THE END OF VOLTRON BUT AHHHHHHHH

W A I T

HE'S GONNA BE BROUGHT BACK?????

HOLD UP THEY'RE JUST GONNA BRING ALL THOSE DEAD PEOPLE BACK??????

WAIT IS HE

BLINKY CALLED HIM A SON

HOLD ON IS THIS GOING TO BE A CLIFFHANGER???????????

BRUH THEY REALLY JUST CAN'T END THE SERIES WITHOUT CLIFFHANGERS like there's always an open ending

TROLLHUNTER TOBY????? You know what forget the whole rants I had on how toby was written they just redeemed it all

And that's all! I'd rate it a 6.5/10 because it's definitely the weakest of all the sequels but still had amazing animation and some good plot points. It's just really hard to look over the bad stuff enough to rate it any higher.

[silverwhittlingknife]

The ages of the Batfamily kids according to Secret Files timelines

Today I saw a really nice rundown calculating the Batfamily ages in the 80s, and it reminded me that I've been meaning to post my personal favorite timelines, which are from the late 90s retcon!

In the late 90s, post-Zero Hour, DC decided to create the official Secret Files timelines. The key points of these timelines for the Batfamily:

Dick and Tim are six years apart and both became Robin at age 13; Jason was only Robin for a year

So for example, in the 1997 Batman Secret Files timeline, Dick’s parents are killed in Year 2, Dick becomes Robin in Year 3, Jason becomes Robin and then dies in Year 7, and Tim becomes Robin in Year 9. So 6 years pass between Dick becoming Robin and Tim becoming Robin.

Why This is Good: Jason only being Robin for a year

I personally like this a lot. Street-kid Jason (as opposed to pre-Crisis acrobat Jason of the Flying Todds) was introduced in June 1987 and then infamously died in Death in the Family in December 1988. That's only about 18 months real-time, i.e. Robin!Jason has very few plotlines. Here's a list of all Robin!Jason's appearances from his introduction to his death:

Batman 408-10: Jason's introduction: Jason becomes Robin

B 411-12: Two-Face kills Willis Todd; Jason seeks revenge

B 413-5: Three one-shots with random villains

Detective Comics 580-581: Jason vs. Two-Face again

B 416: Dick finds out about the new Robin; they meet for the 1st time

B 417-20: Jason and Bruce fight KG Beast

B 421-22: Dumpster Slasher kills women; Jason gets violent (in 423 Jason doesn't appear)

B 424-5: Jason is mayybe responsible for Felipe Garzonas's death

B 426-8: Death in the Family: Jason dies.

Keeping Jason's tenure as Robin short allows the in-universe timeline to not outstrip the out-of-universe timeline. Plus IMO it explains - in part - why Jason's relationship with Bruce and Dick might be so shaky that he's furious at them when he comes back as the Red Hood: he wasn't Robin long enough to develop relationships with them that he trusted.

More broadly... if you try to backfill relationships off-panel, a lot of the storylines that did happen on panel become weird. So, for example, Dick saying that Jason wasn't ready to be Robin in NT 55, or Dick using Jason as a cautionary tale for Tim in NT 67, or Dick saying they didn't know each other well in GK 45. Or later storylines, like Jason gloating about how Dick is probably dead in UtRH, or Jason stabbing Dick in Nightwing and attacking him in BftC and B&R. Dick and Jason have a ton of conflict in post-Crisis, and YMMV, but it reads to me more as "we've never known each other well so we don't trust or understand each other," which is very different tonally from "we used to be really close but now we've had a bitter falling-out."

And personally, there's something I find really compelling about the idea of Dick and Jason having never gotten close before his death - partly just because I love and enjoy conflict, but also because it leaves the possibility for them to someday create a later, stronger relationship as adults, finally actually getting to know each other and growing beyond those tensions from earlier years.

Nightwing Secret Files

Published two years after Batman Secret Files, Nightwing Secret Files (1999) has a largely identical timeline: Dick’s parents die in Year 1, Dick becomes Robin in Year 2, Jason becomes Robin and then dies in Year 7, and Tim becomes Robin in Year 8. Again, 6 years pass between Dick becoming Robin and Tim becoming Robin. Again, Jason dies within a year.

And the Guide to the DC Universe (2000) again has a six-year difference between Dick-becomes-Robin and Tim-becomes-Robin:

Some comics track these timelines exactly! For example, in Teen Titans .5, Slade recalls the events of New Titans 84 (a bit after Tim's origin story), and says they happened "three years ago." He also mentions the Graysons' deaths, which he says happened "ten years ago." In other words: a seven-year gap, just like you'd expect.

Of course, comics are never completely consistent - in this incredibly clunky As You Know Bob scene, Tim and Dick explain Tim's origin story to each other, and Dick implies that Tim was about seven when the Graysons died (YJ Secret Origins 80-Page Giant 1998).

According to Secret Files timelines, though, Tim ought to have been six, not seven. Oh well. XD

Why This is Good: Dick and Tim being relatively close in age

The late 90s/00s is the heyday of Dick and Tim's relationship, and although Tim's definitely Dick's little brother, the age gap's often not that big a deal. Their vibe is "high schooler & college student." Tim calls Dick his best friend. Dick calls Tim his closest ally. They rely on each other.

They also have some significant fights.

I love their dynamic, I love THEM, and I think all these comics work best with the age gap as originally envisioned, akin to the one between Tim and Damian: big enough that it sometimes matters, but small enough that they can have fights or snipe at each other without Dick being de facto in the wrong.

IMO, if you make the age gap too big, Dick and Tim's relationship starts blurring into Dick and Damian's pseudo-parent + child thing, and it really screws with Dick's characterization, because their sibling squabbles are normal for older brother+younger brother, but weird for adult+child. Their tensions in e.g. Nightwing 6 & 11, Bruce Wayne: Murderer, Titans/YJ: Graduation Day, Red Robin, etc. all read differently if Dick's too much older than Tim.

A random grab-bag of Dick and Tim in the 90s/00s:

(Roughhousing! Pranks! Talking about girlfriends! Confiding insecurities! Complaining about Bruce! Squabbling about who gets to meet Oracle's ex! <3 They're brothers, not parent-child, and that's really important to their interactions.)

Secret Files: potential problems

Okay, now that I've hopefully sold you on these beautiful timelines, what are some of the issues with them?

1. Nightwing Secret Files retcons Dick’s backstory so that he left Gotham / became Nightwing at around age 17 instead of 19. This gives Dick more angst, so I like it. It makes Bruce more unsympathetic, though, so depending on your preferred Dick-and-Bruce relationship, though, you may not be a fan.

2. Trickier: retroactively de-aging Dick creates various continuity problems if you try to use his pre-Crisis history (and some of his early post-Crisis history), 'cause you have to work out when on earth he went to Hudson University or if he did go there, plus some awkwardness with the Titans, like when you try to calculate how old Roy was when Lian was born, etc. etc.. OTOH I think Donna's canonically 19 when she marries Terry Long (sigh), so the Titans do just get involved in serious relationships at young ages. (It's comic book world! 13-year-olds fight crime! 19-year-olds get married! Time is an illusion only waiting to be retconned!) I think these continuity problems are surmountable but they definitely exist.

3. I'm not a huge fan of Jason dying a whole year before Tim becomes Robin.

I think Tim's origin story makes much more sense if he starts panicking about Batman a few months after Jason's death instead of waiting a whole year. In Nightwing Secret Files, Jason dies a year before Tim shows up; in Batman Secret Files, Jason dies two years before Tim shows up! IMO this is way too much time!

If I were in charge of tweaking these timelines,

If I were in charge of tweaking these timelines, I'd give Tim and Jason a three-year age gap and have Jason die at 15, shortly before his 16th birthday, in the same year that Tim becomes Robin. I can kind of justify this because...

Both Cass and Jason seem to be about 2-3 years older than Tim.

Cass is 18 in Batgirl 39 (Jun 2003), when Tim is 15.

Tim then turns 16 in Robin 116, published in Nov 2003. So I think - depending on which you prefer - you could make a "canon" argument for an age gap of 2 or 3 years between Cass and Tim.

And in Batgirl 65 we’re told Cass is about the same age as Jason.

To summarize, in the late 90s/early 00s timelines:

Dick is 2-3 years older than Cass and Jason

Dick is 5 years older than Steph (she seems to be a year older than Tim - she's 15 when he's 14, and she's in college when he's 17).

Dick is 6 years older than Tim.

Dick is 13 years older than Damian (since Tim is 7 years older than Damian).

(Basically most people's ages should be calculated based on Tim's because he's the only one who regularly has birthdays. =p)

Consider! If Dick is 13 years older than Damian... that means that Damian is born right around the time when Dick becomes Robin.

This isn't hugely important or anything but I think it's cool.

(I also think it's cool that the age gap between Dick and Tim is about the same as the one between Tim and Damian. Plus Jason and Cass are about in the middle between Dick and Tim. Everyone's so nicely equidistant!)

I'm not totally sure when this retcon started - possibly in 1994 with Zero Hour? It of course totally contradicts everything implied by the comics in the 80s, and there is no possible way to reconcile them. =p

But, uh, on the bright side we get to pick the stuff we like?

Ah, comics. XD

[bigskydreaming]

Hi! You've talked about Brother Blood a lot so I was hoping you'd know. I saw a post where some people were saying that Dick being brainwashed was a retcon done just to make him look less jerky. Is that true?

Eh, yes and no?

Like it depends on what you consider a retcon to be, I guess. If you view any story moment that contradicts or alters a previous one to be a retcon, then yeah, I suppose you could call it that. Personally though, I consider retcons to be later additions to a story or continuity that create a REPLACEMENT for an earlier story moment, that people are meant to refer back to from then on. Dick's brainwashing, to me, was simply a reveal. It altered the way his previous behavior was viewed, but it was deliberately led up to, like that WAS the story.

Now, to be fair, the specific way the brainwashing was explained, it made things ambiguous enough that you could make USE of the brainwashing to excuse or explain away pretty much anything you didn't like about his behavior between the first Church of Blood story (when Dick was still Robin) and this one. So I suppose in that respect, it is a retcon.

But what makes me scrunchy faced when most people write off or ignore the brainwashing as a retcon (and why is it that people are so willing to accept SOME retcons but not others, I would really like to know, like 'but it was a retcon' seems to come up ANNOYINGLY often in Dick's narratives in particular, with that line being used to try and invalidate Dick being fired, Robin being his mother's name for him, that he was brainwashed in the Church of Blood stories, etc. Yeah they were retcons, but so were eighty million other things people just accept. Like.....I'm just saying).

BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyway, what makes me go eh about people going 'oh the brainwashing was just a retcon to make him seem like less of a jerk' because yes, I have heard that argument too.....is that the things people cite as what they feel are examples of the behavior they think this was a retcon FOR, like.....just do not work as such.

Because the big ones are the ways Dick behaved on Tamaran and with Kory's political marriage, and then his fight with Donna upon his return to Earth.

And I just want to point out the timeline involved here:

Dick's big blowup with Kory over her political marriage? Was in New Teen Titans #18. His fight with Donna, was in #19. The reveal of his brainwashing, which led him to lash out due to the mental and emotional turmoil he was in fighting against the conditioning, as Mother Mayhem termed it, was in #22.

That's a span of less than five months from the biggest jerk moment people cite as what was being retconned with the brainwashing....til the brainwashing moment itself. And there's a couple of things to keep in mind here.....first, that comics - especially back in the eighties - take TIME to produce. Even if there had been a huge reader backlash at the time of #18's publication, with readers calling for Dick's head, the idea that this could lead to inserting the entire brainwashing plot setup as a fix-it retcon is dubious if not outright impossible. Issue #22 was on the SHELVES not even five full months after #18's publication. In the 80s, the way comics were produced and published, they needed to be completely finished and shipped off to retailers a couple months before their on-shelf date, and it took weeks to print everything, and the lettering and inking and every step of the creation of each issue was done by hand.....

How exactly, do people propose that DC even had TIME to note any sizable need to correct or fix Dick's behavior in something like #18....and actually DO so by #22?

Not to mention, every issue in between them lays another brick into place on the road to REVEALING that Dick was brainwashed this whole time.....because in #19, when he had that big fight with Donna, he was actively shown questioning himself on his OWN behavior after the fight was over. Asking himself why he said the things he did, like....he was second-guessing his own behavior, which I don't see how that could have possibly been put in to lay groundwork for a retcon AFTER #18 was published....because #19 and #20 likely should have been already completed and off to the printers by the time #18 even hit stands.

And then AFTER #19, in #20 and #21, we saw Dick actively infiltrating the Church, or THINKING that was what he was doing, even though the Church was on to him the whole time, because his conditioning was actually just....directing him to basically walk right back into their clutches. Again, works as set up for the REVEAL that he was brainwashed, but impossible to have put into place to enable a RETCON.

So no matter how you look at it, even IF the decision to introduce a brainwashing retcon to 'fix' some of Dick's behavior had been made due to story elements from BEFORE #18.....

The events of #18 themselves, as well as #19-#22......still do not work as things that are just conveniently retconned by the brainwashing.....they have to have been written with the specific intention in mind of laying groundwork for the idea that Dick was 'lashing out due to his mental struggle against his conditioning.'

The timing just does not work for them to be anything else.

So it doesn't work for me at all, to cite those issues as things retconned by the brainwashing reveal, when HOW Dick acted on Tamaran, plus his fight with Donna, were very clearly written as DELIBERATE moments where he was behaving in a way that can literally be described as out of character, because they were meant to post-reveal, be viewed as examples of how he wasn't himself, how his mental and emotional state themselves were being impacted by external influences. (Not just in terms of external events but like, external mental conditioning).

And I just don't think it works to use moments that are written WITHIN a narrative to be DELIBERATELY out of character.....as examples of his characterization or proof of the necessity of a retcon for his character, lol. That makes no sense to me.

And lastly, I also have to point to the fact that like......good old Marv is not actually the most aware guy out there? And I question the idea that just because people TODAY may look at various things Dick said or did in stories leading up to the reveal and think oh yeah, of course they'd want to course correct that.....I don't exactly think that means that back in the 80s, Wolfman viewed those same things as even NEEDING a retcon to correct. Especially when you consider things the other characters around Dick were doing, without any kind of retcon for their worst behavior? Why would it be only Dick that he saw a need to retcon his behavior or actions, especially when Dick's worst ones literally ONLY happen in the actual narrative buildup to the brainwashing reveal, mere months before the issue revealing it hit the stands?

*Shrugs* Anyway, YMMV, but to me its always clearly read as all of that was just a story where writing Dick acting increasingly out of character in ways that isolated him from his closest friends and allies so there was no one around TO stop him from walking himself right back into the Church's grasp....like, that was pretty clearly the POINT of that entire narrative, and the literal reason those fights he had even happened.

Writing it off as a retcon just to me seems an unnecessary tangle that doesn't serve any real purpose and complicates things needlessly. All it accomplishes is more of the usual 'oh Dick's not so great, look at THIS stuff he did, and how DC did this and this to make all that go away.'

Like.....DC doesn't even see a need to retcon away BRUCE'S worst behavior - then as much as now - and if they don't do it for BATMAN why are people so sure they're invested in doing it for Dick Grayson?

Sometimes a story reveal is just a story reveal, if you ask me. Which you did. So yeah. That's my answer. Nah, it wasn't actually a retcon, it was a planned plot twist.

Edit: Actually one last thing to point out -

Wolfman wrote brainwashing and possession storylines all the time. ALL THE TIME. Like, he LOVES that shit. 99% of those other ones don’t seem to have ‘need to retcon this character’s behavior’ as a reason for them being written, so why does this particular storyline need a reason for existing beyond ‘Wolfman wanted to write a brainwashing story. Again.’

[ectonurites]

can anybody please explain the appeal of tim drake because ive been into the batfamily for a while now and tbh im really confused on why people like his character so much compared to the other robins. like they all have their own thing going on and he just... doesnt?

Have you read his Robin solo? Because if not and you want to try to like him but just don’t understand why people do, that’s what I’d recommend. That and like, Young Justice 1998. 

Because Tim definitely... does have his own thing going on. Maybe not in the same way as the others, but like, there’s a reason he has a 183 issue long solo comic that ran for like 16 years: he was fun to read about!

But I will give some more specific thoughts on the subject as a Tim Drake Appreciator™ (this got long im sorry)

The appeal of Tim (especially early on Tim) is kinda the fact that he’s this more normal kid. For a while that is his ‘thing’. He was basically designed to be a self-insert (he definitely became more than that along the way, but from the start he was meant to be relatable) in a different way than how Dick and Jason had been before him. 

Like the role of Robin from the start was this way to create a character young readers could identify with more, could see themselves in more. And Dick and Jason did that, but they still had this element to their lives and stories that was more... unattainable for the average reader. Dick was a circus prodigy, Jason was either also a circus prodigy if we remember pre-crisis or if we go with his post-crisis story he’s this street-wise orphaned kid who had a really tough life but still went on to be a hero anyways. Obviously those lives are relatable for some people, but those’re definitely not as broadly recognized as common upbringings especially not by DC trying to market to the ‘average’ kid/young teen.

But the creation of Tim changed the game a bit. Dick and Jason were these aspirations a kid could look to like ‘wow I want to be cool like that!’ but Tim was a Robin designed for kids to look at and go ‘wow, his problems and civilian life are just like mine AND he’s a hero, I want to be cool like that!’, ya know? Tim was... just a clever kid with an average life who managed to connect some dots and had enough drive to want to fix things he saw were a problem, he didn’t have the same kind of heightened drama backstory the others did. The Robins that came after Tim definitely didn’t have this idea of relatability in mind the same way either. Unfortunately Steph’s time as Robin was much more of a marketing ploy than an actual like... decision to make her Robin, so it’s hard to really fit her into this conversation. But Damian from the start was first of all initially created not to be Robin but just as the son of Talia and Bruce back in the 80’s, but when he was later reimagined into the character that would become Robin he had the whole ‘raised by and is the heir to the league of assassins and is the son of batman’ thing going on still. He just was not supposed to be relatable that same way, he was a character designed with different things in mind.

I really think it was more just DC’s 90′s era younger-audience comics in general that tried to push that relatability thing (like in YJ how Cissie even after quitting the team stays a major character as a civilian throughout, and the civilian aspect that’s super present in Bart’s 90s solo too, etc), but later in the 2000’s that idea was definitely pushed to the side in favor of... putting in even more dramatic superhero-y stuff.

And the other thing that’s... such a more normal thing but it actually made him unique here, was that Tim’s dad was still alive until like 2004 (so 15 years into Tim being around as a character). This gave Tim a lot more typical ‘family school girlfriends normal life etc’ problems on top of/in contrast with his superhero problems. These just manifested in very different ways than they could with the other Robins because of that unique situation with a living civilian parent who doesn’t know about hero stuff (until he did find out which lead to that whole Unmasked thing, but there was only the brief time around War Games & Identity Crisis where Jack knew Tim was actively Robin and he was... still alive) Tim also had his life at school expanded way more than most other Robins, like, he had such an extended supporting cast of civilian friends which is a really interesting thing to read about (and the fact that he hasn’t had that stuff since the New 52 I think really hurts his character)

And then related to that loss of his dad... Personally another thing about Tim that really interests me is how a lot of things were more... his choice. if that makes sense. A lot of characters in the Batfamily were struck with tragedy/extreme trauma before they became heroes and that’s what spurred them into this life of becoming heroes. Tim’s situation wasn’t like that at all! When he first got involved in everything during Lonely Place of Dying, the only tragedy he’d experienced was watching Dick’s tragedy happen. Which sure yes traumatic obviously, but that’s not the same as how pretty much all the other Bats had gone through these very personal losses or other sorts of very first-hand personal traumas that served as motivators. Tim didn’t start to experience those things until after he got involved in the hero life, and aside from his Mom’s death which was more of just an unrelated incident (that technically happened before he was officially Robin but it was during his time training to become Robin), pretty much all these other tragedies and things... would not have happened or been experienced by him had he not become Robin. 

That’s not me placing blame on him or anything like that, because god no that’s not how that works, but it’s very interesting because from his point of view he definitely feels that guilt because he knows him being Robin played a role in a lot of it (Thinking specifically about in Adventure Comics #3 when Kon even says “I know what guilt does to you” to him like it’s... it’s a thing with him!). His dad was murdered because he was Robin. He only met Steph and started dating her through being Robin, and thus he would not have experienced the loss of his girlfriend dying like that had he not been Robin. Tim met both Conner and Bart through being Robin, and would not have had a personal connection to them when they died otherwise. The whole Bruce’s death thing after Final Crisis, like. I could go on honestly, that was only talking about losses not even his own experiences nearly getting killed, but yeah, all these personal tragedies were experienced by him specifically because he chose to bring himself into this life, which I think in turn plays into how throughout his comics you see him go from having this really optimistic view on things and being really hopeful to seeing him at that low point he reaches by the time of Red Robin. (thinking about that one post that points out how Tim started out in the 90′s as an optimist and Steph a cynic and by the time they were Red Robin and Batgirl in 2009 they had switched outlooks...) 

I also think that him having had such a great team book with the original Young Justice can help contribute to people liking him. His friendships with the rest of the core four and that team in general are really compelling. (and that’s something like again when looking at the other Robins, while Dick had the Titans ofc, Jason never really found footing with a team outside of like one mission with the Titans and then We All Know How Damian’s Teen Titans Stuff Went. Steph also only ever really worked with a team outside the batfam on very brief occasions) and even though I’m not as big of a fan of the 2003 Teen Titans run that came after YJ, people who read Young Justice and also that could follow and be attached to those same characters over a pretty decently long period of time. 

Idk man, I don’t really have an ultimate point here i’m just rambling. I can definitely understand not seeing the appeal to him right away (honestly i’ve been into Batfam since like 2013/2014 and Tim did not become one of my faves until 2020) especially if like... idk when you say ‘into the batfamily’ that can mean a lot of different things. If you’re reading more like the bigger events with the batfam sure Tim can kinda fade into the bg a bit, if you’re more talking about fanon the fanon version of him is prettyyyyy uhhhhh not really the same as how he was in pre New 52 canon, if you’re mainly reading New 52 era Batfam stuff then that Tim I also don’t understand the appeal of bc thats Not My Boy, if you’re interested in a different member primarily and only familiar with Tim when he shows up in things focused on that other character then it’s easy to not really understand the appeal right away bc he’s more there to support that character rather than shine in his own right. 

I think it’s also worth mentioning he’s just not everybody’s cup of tea, and that’s totally fine. Like, these are fictional characters and sometimes you just will vibe with a character and sometimes you won’t! idk if this helped at all or even made sense. but yeah. I just think he’s neat 😌

[johnvenus]

How YJ & JL Dark Dropped The Ball With Zatanna (Part 3/5)

Welcome to Part 3 of the post wherein I recap Zatanna’s character in DC comics to compare it with her depiction in JLD and YJ.  

Part One: Zatanna’s Search and early JL appearances    

https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/679908146955862016/how-yj-jldark-dropped-the-ball-with-zatanna

Part Two: Sindella’s Story  https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/679908715915313152/how-yj-jldark-dropped-the-ball-with-zatanna

Part Three: Zatanna’s new look, becoming chairwoman, meeting Raven and losing her powers:  

By George Perez

The New Look

The next major development for Zatanna happened in JLA #185 written by Gerry Conway with art by the incomparable George Perez.  

The story begins with Barry Allen pondering his life, he’s been through hell in his own title where Iris is dead, so much has changed in his life and he is starting to hit an early mid life crisis. 

He is talking to Zatanna about it on the Watchtower when the latter has an epiphany:  

Its interesting that Barry is the one who inspires Zatanna to create her own costume especially since legacy is so intrinsic to the Flash Family as well as the Zatara’s. I know people make fun of the ‘snake head’ costume that Perez designed but I like it, primarily for the reason why she wore it; she wanted her own identity and not something that defines her by her parents. 

I think the costume, like Perez’s other costumes such as Nightwing and Troia’s, suffers from having too many details and elements. I like the kimono sleeves, the headdress could be a reference to Sindella and the white cape, I could do without the thigh highs or head dress thing extending all the way to the back of her ears. Ivan Reis took a stab at re designing it but I don’t think it hit the mark. I would like to see another artist take a pass at it.         

Also, yes, this would be the real beginning of a romantic subplot between her and Barry Allen. Iris was presumed dead in Barry’s own title during this period and Barry himself is going through a rough patch.  Her taking his cowl and the next panel cutting to the kitchen ware is deliberately meant to be suggestive.   However, in the very same issue we are told that they just ‘talked’ all night.  This was the early 80′s when comics were still experimenting with mature topics. Even in the mid 80′s Dick and Starfire being in shown in  bed together before marriage was considered controversial. 

Still, for two people who just ‘talked’ all night, they sure are awkward about it to the point where even the other Leaguer’s notice:   

   Source: JLA #190  

Side note: I miss when Barry was defined as a thoughtful scientist and not a crybaby who breaks the timeline every time he misses his mommy.  

We still see her stage outfit when she gets a feature in Worlds Finest #274 written by Gerry Conway with art by Don Newton:   

Her stage outfit is for performing by paying tribute to her father and her Perez costume represents her own self.   This is honestly, how I prefer it to be done.   

Raven

1980 also saw the introduction of Marv Wolfman and George Perez's New Teen Titans. A fantastic relaunch of the title that would come to define the team for the next several years. The introduction arc involves Raven seeking out help to stop her father Trigon. She goes to the League first and unlike what the interwebs would have you believe, Zee wasn't hostile to Raven nor does she have any prejudice against demons, she simply warned them because she could sense Trigon’s evil within Raven. This was their fist meeting and they don’t know anything about Raven at that point:

Source: New Teen Titans #5

Later, Raven gathers members of the New Teen Titan to help fight Trigon. We get a brief clash between the JL and the Titans though since this is a Titans, it's them who gets to tell off the League:

You can see Zee is on the adult side.

She is also the one who reveals that Raven had put a spell on Wally West making her fall in love with Raven so he would agree to come along to help:

Source: New Teen Titans #4

This reveal would have repercussions for years and Wally's connection to Raven would be a defining point during his time with the NTT (vol1)  even carrying over to NTT Vol 2.  

Raven and Zatanna didn't have much interaction after that but they were seen chatting during one of the rare get-togethers between the League and the Titans:

Source: Action Comics #546.

Also with Zatanna on the League, Raven on Titans, Dr Fate on the JSA and Dr Mist on the Global Guardians, everything feels so well balanced especially compared to today. I think magic characters work best on teams where they are the only magic users there.   

Losing Her Powers

-JLA #190 (1981) features the return of Starro, Zee's powers start to go on the fritz once the League figures out Starro’s weakness is getting frozen, Zatanna whips up the spells that takes him out:  

In the following issue  (JLA #191)  Zee realizes her powers have begun to fade away and interestingly enough, the first person she confides in with is Ray. Note that her father is still alive and out of everybody she’s interacted with thus far (Barry, Hal, Ralph, Katar, Shayera,  DInah, Ollie, J’onn) she chose Ray. 

Though she is not the only person whose powers are fading, the other Leaguer's are facing the same problem.

Barry asks Zatanna why she didn’t come to him since he is a ‘practical scientist’ while Ray is theoretical to which Zee cites that they have a confused relationship right now and she didn’t think it was a good idea.  (Also, uhh, Barry, you may be smarter than the average police scientist but Ray is a Professor, unless it has to do with the Speed Force or a crime scene, Ray is the best option out of the two of you.)�� 

The villain of the piece are the Key and Amazo. The latter is able to draw upon the ‘life energy’ of the League to replicate his powers. Key is trapped in a degenrative dwarf state and he is using the energy that Amazo steals to restore his body to it’s normal state   

The League manages to find the HQ of Key and Amazo. This leads to a fight with Amazo and the League who all have half of their actual abilities.

We get a couple of cool moments of Zee relying on something besides magic to help herself:   

The rest of JL (with their fading powers) take on Amazo and starts to get the upper hand, not realizing they were putting Key's life in danger. Zee is the first one to realize this, so she gives him a small portion of her life span so the Key won't die and so he won't threaten the JL anymore.

Sadly, this plot point won't ever be referenced again. And yeah, this is a very selfless act on her part.    Also lol at the Key turning into a Zatanna simp at the end.   

I miss the Zee/Ray Palmer friendship. I think the only time it's been referenced in modern comics was in Joe Kelly's JLA run during the 'Obsidian Age' story arc.

Also, I know most people associate Ray with Brandon Routh but I’ve always heard John C McGinnely who voiced him on JLU and is best known for playing Dr Cox on Scrubs.   

If you're still scrolling through this post and wondering 'wow, there is a lot of and Constantine hasn't even shown up!' that's kind of my point, Zatanna has along extensive history beyond Constantine and it's sad that we get to see so little of it nowadays.

Teaming Up With Wonder Woman 

Of course, Zee still had to get adjusted to her new powerset which leads to this moment in JLA #202:    

I can’t help but crack up at this scene.  Zatanna freaking out over accidentally hurting WW and the latter reassuring her by punching through a steel beam. Yeah, if my female friends had superpowers they would probably do something like this too.    

This was a bonkers issue where Batman was on a routine space walk to fix the space satellite when a malfunction caused an explosion that sent him hurtling into space and created a hole in the League satellite that nearly sucked Hawkman into space (which you see WW and Zee fixing above).  

WW, Zatanna, Hawkman and Red Tornado set out to rescue Batman whose been taken in by alien spaceship that’s been cloaked and hiding behind the sun since the Ice Age. 

Wonder Woman takes more of a leadership role here and the League even have battle plans:

The ship was sent from an alien planet rescue an injured explorer in stasis.  It found Batman instead and turned him into this:    

Anyway, Hawkman manages to subdue Furry werewolf Batman (or should I say Batsaad?) and the fully automated alien space ship manages to restore him to normal.  He wakes up back on the Watchtower and is none the wiser to what happened to him.    

Do you think the League ever joke among each other about the time Batman got turned into a furry space werewolf when Batman is going through his more dickish phases?   

The story ends Hawkman sending the alien ship to the real location of the explorer-in-stasis and I don’t think anybody has every written a follow up to this.  

In the same year (1982), we got a much grander team up in Wonder Woman's own title in WW Vol 1 #291-293 titled 'Judgement In Infinity' written by Paul Levitz and Roy Thomas with art by Gene Colan. The story featured a cosmic being named the Adjudicator who travels to various worlds to judge their worthiness and wipe them out with but a thought if they aren’t. But he is confused about earth since it is at it’s peak but hasn’t destroyed itself yet. So decides to put not just E-1 (where the JL are) to test but also Earth 2, Earth X and Earth -I by sending his Four Horsemen; Death, Famine, Plague and War to judge which earth is worthy enough to survive.

The story line also drew in not just Zatanna but also Madame Xanadu, Supergirl, Phantom Lady (from Earth X), Black Canary, Huntress, Power Girl, Donna Troy, Starfire and Raven as well. Each story involved a different set of heroines teaming up to face one of the 4 Horsemen on one of the earths that's been put to test.

The first story teams up Wonder Woman and Zatanna against Famine in India on Earth 1.

Source: Wonder Woman Vol 1 #291

The second story shows Black Canary, Power Girl and Huntress fights Plague on Earth 2. The third story features Supergirl and Madame Xanadu teaming up with the Phantom Lady of the war torn Earth X fighting against war. The fourth story features Donna, Raven and Starfire fighting Death.

 It all culminates with all the heroines (though mainly WW) fighting the Adjudicator aboard his own ship where Diana realizes that the Adjudicator is not some cosmic judge but the cosmic equivalent of a child playing with various worlds for fun and to keep him from harming himself. The heroines manage to escape just in time before the Adjudicator is picked up by his cosmic overseers.   

Source: Wonder Woman #293

All in all, it's a cool cross over and it does not have the cliche 'Girls Night Out' moniker or a subplot involving all the men getting taken out so the women have to take over which, while well intention ed, always felt vaguely patronizing. No, this is just a cool crossover that just happens to feature female superheroes.

Zatanna becomes Chairwoman + Conclusion of Her Romance With Barry 

In JLA #206 written by Gerry Conway with art by Carmine Infantino (who is once again flexing on his art skills), Zee is elected as chairperson of the League with WW, Batman, Flash and Elongated Man congratulating her: 

Woah, there Ralph.   We also get the conclusion of the romantic subplot with Barry:

Settle down, Ralph.  I like when he was written as a mentor not a perv. 

The story itself is actually flashback narrated by a father to a son in the 25th century. The villains of the piece are the Demon's Three who fought the JL way before Zatanna joined.  

The League members take on the Demons Three, now more powerful than ever but they’re prepared and each League member gets picked off one by one leading to:   

After Batman is taken out, Zee goes all out attacking the Demons Three but when the dust is settled: 

Overall, this is a much better showing against the Demons Three than the one she got in JLD Vol1.  The way magic is depicted is consistent with how Conway has depicted it thus far; magic is an energy, all magic is connected and in balance and its law is similar to the law of thermodynamics.   

At the end of the story, when the son, Gardner (named after writer Gardner Fox) asks his father how he knows all these details, he replies that one of the heroes in the story was an ancestor of his.  Huh, interesting. I wonder which one could it be?

Still, despite all this development, Zee still doesn't have an ongoing. Even Firestorm got one in 1982 while Zatanna only got a back up feature in World's Finest (from #276-278). Although TBF, WF was basically an anthology title during this period. Hawkman, Green Arrow and even Swamp Thing had back up features in WF as well. Her father also had a feature in World’s Finest back in the 50′s.  

The most notable story is from World’s Finest  #276-277 in which Zatanna has to fight an evil doppleganger of herself in order to regain the power she lost in JLA #190-191. The story also showed us that she still wore the classic stage magician costume while performing on stage and also featured the return of her stage manager love interest, Jeffery Sloan. Aside from him, we also meet Blackwall, a normal human who uses stage tricks whom earlier in the story reminded Zee that misdirection is useful even applied to real danger. She would use that to trick her evil doppleganger and gain back the power she lost.

Back to JLoA, Zee being chairwoman is brought up a couple of times, in JLA #207 where we can see that even Superman is adorably respectful of her status:

In JLA #217, we see her advising Superman when they were dealing with a mystical threat:

And in #219 afterwards, we see her acting more like a mentor, which usually involves going ‘Firestorm! No!”:  

She also  guest stared in Blue Devil #4 and #5 and later #13. Dan Cassidy is a stuntman who was cursed by an actual demon to be trapped in his own blue devil stunt suit. After a team up with Superman  the latter takes him to the Watchtower to consult with Zatanna.  

At this point, Zatanna has surpassed her father and cemented herself as the go-to person for magical problems. She also summons Zatara’s ‘Book of Magic’ from her father’s mansion (which I don’t think we’ve seen since Zatanna’s Search ended) to better understand Dan’s condition.   

Unfortunately, even for her, reversing Dan’s curse is difficult.  Still she helps him better understand his condition, they team up to fight a bad guy, oh and there is romantic tension between the two:  

Out of all her romantic options, I like Blue Devil the best. He is in the entertainment business just like her. They are both inherently light hearted characters whose stories can be as light and dark as necessary. Plus they compliment each other; Dan is a physical fight with a power staff who is more likely to throw a punch while Zatanna is a mage and glass canon who fights from a distance and can fill Dan in on stuff he doesn’t know.   

Finally, one notable JLA stories in which Zatanna plays a pivotal role is in JLA #225-227 written by Joey Cavalieri with art by Chuck Patton in which  we see the League take on the Cult of Fialtux; an illumanti like organization with members scattered around the globe and built around the worship of Hellrazer. The latter is described as a ‘demon that not even hell could contain’. How cool is that?  

The story opens with Ray Palmer having to stop some thieves at his university and of course. Which brings him to the Watchtower.  Zatanna is shown to recognize the Cult:    

The quartet goes to one of the cult’s church’s where they are attacked by the followers.   

We get some cool action scenes with Zee, Hawkgirl, Black Canary and Green Arrow which I unfortunately have to cut since I don’t want to end up posting the whole comic. But I swear, this and other instances on Black Canary and Zatanna must have been what inspired Paul Dini to write the two in ‘Zatanna/Black Canary: Bloodspell’.   

They quickly make their way to the place where one of the cult leaders are communicating with Hellrazer which leads us to:  

Source: JLA #225  

Zatanna ends up getting dragged into another dimension by Hellrazer.  We get a cool scene of Black Canary, Hawkgirl and GA deciding to follow her into the portal.  

They eventually find her but unbeknownst to them, she’s been possessed by Hellrazer.    Meanwhile, the remainder of the League are traveling around the globe taking down the other cult leaders until only one location is left.  

Back at the Perdition dimension, we see Shayera reflecting on the differences between her and Zatanna:  

Source: JLA #227

Back then, both Shayera and Katar were depicted as scientists more than warriors.  The 2001 JLU cartoon would portray her as a hot tempered warrior and while I love that version of Shayera as well, I think my ideal Shayera would be a balance of the Noble Warrior and scientist.   

The quartet makes it to the location where the remainder of the League are fighting the final cult leader. Hellrazer frees himself from Zatanna’s body and the scale of the fight gets considerably bigger.  

We also finally get a mention of her father,   after a long time:  

Add Hellrazer to the list of villains Zatanna fought that I would love to see brought back. I also love that we now have a recurring theme of the League just stepping back letting Zatanna save the day.   

#228-230 isn't a Zee centric but it is a pivotal story for the JLA which I recommend checking out; it features the return of Martian Manhunter who has come to warn earth and the League of an invasion by his own people. The most notable fallout of this story arc would be the destruction of the Watchtower, Aquaman disbanding the JL in JLA Annual #2 and J'onn becoming an exile from his own planet. In many ways, this story arc was the precursor to the JLU episodes 'Secret Origins' as well as Starcrossed'.

I will mention again that I will do individual posts for the stories mentioned here. Consider this a condensed version of the ground I am going to cover.

Next up: Justice League Detroit, Vixen,  John Zatara’s Death, Zatanna’s final story arc in JLA Vol 1 and Madame Xanadu. 

Part 4: https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/679910087824916480/how-yj-and-jld-dropped-the-ball-with-zatanna-45

[bonillart]

Figuring out the Batfam age in a way that makes sense.

Let me preface this by stating that the timeline is all messed up. I got inspired by a post that had the years that each Robin was a Robin, i.e. Dick was robin for like 40 yrs, Jason lasted around 6 years, Tim around 20, Stephanie less than a year, and Damian has been Robin for 11 years now. 

This took me approximately 9 tries to make it seem as seamless as possible, I wanted to maintain continuity and certain years/ages that are explicitly stated in the comics. 

Also do to technology use and references in the comics now we are assuming that their age (in the post) is their current age in 2020. 

Alfred: He is 72 years old, he was a spy for some years and later went to the Wayne Manor as a favor to his father when Thomas and Martha Wayne had a child. Alfred was 29 yrs at the age of Bruce’s birth. 39 yrs when the Waynes were shot. 

Bruce: His parents were shot when he was 10 yrs old, he started training fairly soon after maybe 11-12, and travel the world with the company of Alfred until 16 when he emancipated himself and went to train with the likes of Ra’s Al Ghul, he also briefly saw a young Clark Kent seeking to train as well (I forgot the comic but it was like a glance). Comes back around 24, sees the bat, becomes Batman. At 26 years old, takes in Dick Grayson as his ward. At 30 years old, he and Talia have their affair and Damian becomes the result. Fast forward 13 years, he is now 43 years old. Clark Kent is 42 years old. 

Dick: His parents died at 9 years old, he becomes the first Boy Wonder at 10, after a year of training. Get’s kidnap at the age of 13 by the League of Assassins, creates the Teen Titans at 15-16, quits being Robin at 18, and becomes Nightwing 2-3 months later. At 23 becomes Batman after Bruce’s death, and takes Damian under his wing. He is now 26. 

Jason: Steals the Batmobile’s wheels at 14, trains and takes the mantel of Robin before his 15th birthday. Dies at 15 around April. comes back to life around 16-17, comes back to Gotham at 18 yrs old to take his vengeance on Bruce and the Joker, becoming the Red Hood after the Joker’s alleged first alias. He is currently 22 years old. 

Tim: (So here’s the thing, due to the fact that DC does not care for chronological order unless you want Jason and Tim to be the same age- which is what I originally had because it’s the most logical based on storylines- Tim’s story had to be changed a bit, because fandom likes Tim to be younger than Jason). His parents takes him to see the Flying Grayson when he was 2 years old (2003), while he doesn’t remember the show- obviously- he did get a DVD of the Flying Graysons which he used to analyze when he went all Charlie Kelly on Batman. He figures out who Batman is at 13, and takes becomes the 3rd Robin in the process. At 15 his father is killed by Captain Boomerang, and he is adopted by Bruce, at 16 he meets Damian. He is now 19 years old. 

Stephanie: I made her the same age as Tim but you can add one year if you would so please. Becomes pregnant at 15, as well as being Spoiler, briefly becomes Robin. Gives child up for adoption at 16, dies, comes back, becomes Batgirl. Later on goes back to Spoiler, and is now 19 years old. 

Damian: Born and trained in the League of Assassins, “met” Jason Todd when he was still a child around 7-8 years old while Jason trained under Talia. Jason leaves, and Damian has still not earned the right to know who his father is. On his 10th birthday Damian finally defeats Talia and is granted his wish, he meets Bruce and Tim a week later, and lasts less than a month before being taken back to the League. The following months go crazy between Ra’s wanting to use Damian’s body as his own, and the shorty after his own father dying. He moves into the Wayne Tower’s penthouse to be under the care of Dick Grayson and Alfred Pennyworth. Fast forward 3 years and he is now 13 years old, and created his own Teens Titans. Jon is 10 turning 11 years old. 

Duke: I put Duke around the age of 16 because he is definitely a teenager but he was also placed in foster care after his parents death so he has to be less than 18. 

I’m missing Barbara and Cass so I will be updating this soon. spoiler- Barb is also 26 give or take but I just want to solidify her timeline and Jim’s.  

[brucewayneargento-moved]

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#5

Steph’s birthday (One-shot)

It was late at night when Stephanie arrived at her apartment, she dropped face-first into her bed as soon as she was two inches away from it. She was still wearing her Batgirl uniform.

"Classy."

She immediately turned up and threw at Bat-a-rang in the general direction of where the voice came from. She immediately turned on the light on her nightstand.

"Great aim." Damian smirked at her.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Steph yelled at him incredulously.

"I came to give you something." Damian said.

"And you couldn't wait until morning?" She rubbed her eyes.

"I'm leaving with the Teen Titans in the morning." He simply said. "This was more comfortable for me."

"Oh well, your schedule is most important to me, so that's good." She rolled her eyes.

"Sarcasm isn't a good colour on you, brown." he said as he took something from under his coat. 

"Why you little– She stopped and looked at the envelope curiously as Damian held it in front of his face– what's this?"

"My people know it as a paper envelope.” hye responded.

 Steph frowned "It's not flattering on you either, Dames."

"Just open the damn thing"

 She rolled her eyes. "Fine." She picked the paper object and angrily ripped it’s cover.

She lifted an eyebrow in confusion when he saw a hard paper, colourful rectangle. "Amusement park tickets?” she read out loud.

“Yes, they’re for the one opening in the pier this sunday, on your birthday” Damian

“Okay,” She tilted her head.  “...why?”

“Do I have to explain everything to you?” Damian asked as he sat down at the foot of the bed. “Six months ago you told me your father once took you to the park as a cover for a robbery plot when you were six, and just left you there alone and that you haven’t been there ever since, so I got you tickets so you can take Cassandra or Timothy or any loser friends of your preference.” He explained.

He crossed his arms proudly and smiled self-satisfied with his eyes closed as if he had just finished giving a lecture. A few seconds passed and he opened them and to his surprise he found a teary-eyed Stephanie staring at him in the eye. She immediately stood up and ran over to hug him

“What’s going on?” Damian asked. “Why are you squeezing me with your body?”

“I’m hugging you, you maladjusted twat” Stephanie said while still embracing him. “This is so sweet, I can’t believe you did this for me.”

“Well, you did...helped me have the childhood I never had or whatever...this is my way of paying you back.” Damian looked away and coughed into his fist.

Stephanie’s grin widened and she hugged him tighter to which the boy returned it. Steph pulled away and ruffled his hair.

“Alright, that’s enough mushiness.” He said as he pulled away. “Who are you taking with you anyhow?”

She smiled at him: “I think I have just the person for the job.

They arrived at the park at exactly 8:00 am.

Damian was wearing sunglasses and a red baseball cap because the last thing he needed was for paparazzis to recognize him and assume he was on a date. Stephanie was walking next to him all giddy and excited like a child in a candy store, and they hadn’t even visited the sweets concessionary yet.

“I have our whole day scheduled,” He said, pulling up a laminated sheet of paper. “First we’re going to buy some food that we’re going to ration for the whole day then--

“Ooohh, spinning teacups!” her eyes glistened and she ran towards the ride.

The boy sighed. “-- Or we can just improvise.” and he followed her.

Stephanie went to the line, which was about thirty people, Damian simply rolled his eyes and showed his fast-pass to the guard.

“Oh,I love nepotism.” Stephanie went over to where Damian was and sat next to him on a giant pink cup.

9:00 AM

Stephanie looked at the Batman and Robin photo stand, then at Damian and then grinned.

“Absolutely no.” Damian said without looking up from his copy of the map of the park.

“Oh c’mon!”

12:00 AM

"I told you not to order the jumbo size soda." Steph said while cheerfully biting into a caramelized apple.

"Shut up." Damian said while cross-legged, shaking and looking around. "Where are the goddamn restrooms?"

"Relax, they are probably over here somewhere...just don't think about waterfalls."

Damian pressed his knuckles and death-glared at her as if saying "Keep talking and I'll make you eat your eyes."

3:00 PM  

Damian stood up with his arms crossed and a devilish smirk while he witnessed Steph ejecting all of the sets she had consumed into the trash can behind the "Atom-Smasher" Roller Coaster.

"You know, I could really use a snack right now."

Steph looked up at him while frowning "You little–" she was cut off by her own vomit and had to look down again into the bin.

5:00 PM

“Oh my gosh!” Stephanie said with stars in her eyes as she looked at a purple unicorn hanging with the rest of the plushie animals from the toss a ring stand.

Damian rolled his eyes but took out his wallet and bought three tries. He only needed one.

“I’m going to name him, Dami.” She said as she hugged her new plushie.

“Please don’t” 7:00 PM “Hey Brown!” Stephanie looked up with his mouth full of ice cream and met the flash of Damian’s phone.

“For posterity.”

“I hate you.”

9:00 AM

Damian and Stephanie found themselves leaning on each other’s shoulders while on the back of Bruce’s helicopter, all while Alfred piloted it with “Dami” next to him wit his own set of chopper earbuds

182 notes • Posted 2021-11-16 18:07:09 GMT

#4

Damian: Father, should I have a persona?

Bruce:...what?

Damian: You're public persona is a billionaire playboy, so is Richard's, should I have one as well?

Bruce: If you want to I guess?

Damian: *nods* my persona shall be...a minecraft streamer

631 notes • Posted 2021-05-07 00:29:17 GMT

#3

802 notes • Posted 2021-05-08 00:39:47 GMT

#2

Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Good Point

822 notes • Posted 2021-06-30 21:02:46 GMT

#1

Biden's silence about the John Mulaney/Olivia Munn situation is deafening

1039 notes • Posted 2021-09-11 17:09:06 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[jasonsthunderthighs]

u know a lot about jason can you tell me about the outlaws because they seem cool and i know nothing if not np

I’m just gonna answer with as much information I can without making this a long-ass post. I also tried to answer this twice and it failed both times, so sorry if this is answered late. I can tell this is going to kinda be a long-ish answer. Sorry in advance.

There’s honestly a lot to know about the outlaws and the characters, but then this post would be really long and nobody really wants that, so I do suggest you read the Red Hood and the Outlaws to get a better understanding on her and the others.

He’s teamed up with Koriand’r, Roy Harper, Artemis of Bana-Mighdall (not to get her mixed up with Artemis Crock from Young Justice as she’s known from the show) and Bizzaro. 

Koriand’r (also known as Starfire when she was in the Teen Titans) is a Tamaranian alien from the planet Tamara. She’s a princess who was enslaved as a child by another alien species along with other Tamaranians on the planet. When she escaped, she fled to Earth (which is 26 light-years away from Earth) and joined Jason and Roy after she left the Teen Titans. She’s a really headstrong woman who helps Jason and Roy with so much when they are out in space doing missions or on Earth. What I do hate about this Kori in one of the issues of the Outlaw comics is how she’s dressed and that all she cared about was banging a lot of people with no cares in the world, which was so fucking annoying. Thank (fuck) you, Trash Lobdell and DC. She ended up leaving the Outlaws to go to outer space and help heal her sister, Komand’r. (Also known as Blackstar, you’d see her in Teen Titans the show along with Kori and Roy (you’ll see Roy in a few episodes as Speedy who has a clashing out with Robin (who is Dick Grayson at the time it the show) when he first sees Kori and basically falls for her in the show and that obviously made Dick jealous. It’s pretty hilarious, actually). People (and I) believe that Jason was Red X in the show since it was never revealed who Red X was and Garfield (Beast Boy) suggested Jason as one of the suspects to be Red X in a short Teen Titans video that you can watch on Youtube somewhere.)

Roy Harper (also known as Arsenal, Red Arrow when he was with his mentor Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) and Speedy when he was younger and also in the Teen Titans with Dick Grayson and Koriand’r. Also depends on the issue you read of any comics, cause he’s also seen working beside Jason when he was Robin.) is an alcoholic archer who became Jason’s best friend and partner when he was in the Outlaws.  He’s the one who’s basically annoying Jason with his silly and off-hand comments from time to time. He’s also really good friends with Killer Croc who has helped him in the past with his addiction before. He left to join Dick in the Teen Titans again a short time after Kori leaves. (But he’s also still with Jason in the Red Hood and Arsenal comics. Which they still need to make more or at least continue with putting Roy and Jason together again.)

Jesus Christ, this post is getting long already. BUT ONWARD WITH THE SHOW

Artemis of Bana-Mighdall (not to get her mixed up with Artemis Crock from Young Justice as she’s known from the show, as I have mentioned above.) is an Amazon heroine who left Bana-Mighdall to recover the Bow of Ra. (Even though in the past, it had rejected her when she first tried to claim the weapon) She teams up with Bizzaro and Jason to defeat Black Mask (Roman Sionis) after she fought Jason and found out that he’s not some punk ass fucking around Gotham when she saw what his intentions were for. She does end up having a soft heart for Jason in Red Hood: Outlaw and starts to support and give him advice when Jason goes to her, also having an interest in him when she kisses him. She stays as an Outlaw with Jason until Jason does go solo in new comics or up until she’s seen joining him again in the newer comics that came out this year. 

Bizzaro is a failed clone of Superman that Lex Luthor created to defeat Superman. Even though Black Mask managed to save him from being killed off and used him to use him for his own personal gain and as the muscles basically. He’s like a dumber version of Superman but doesn’t look anything like him at all. He speaks in third person and is alongside Jason and Artemis after they broke the bond he had with Roman and Jason basically having to almost fight Artemis himself so she wouldn’t kill Bizarro. He’s basically like a huge ass teddy bear when he joins the Outlaws and Jason treating him as a son in a way as they continue to work together. That’s honestly the only thing I will thank Trash Lobdell for creating when he was writing for DC and Red Hood. You can still go to Hell, you bastard.

That’s all I have on the Outlaws that I can write down without this being longer than it already is. I hope this helped out a little bit!

[bluegarners]

Who are your fav dc chracters? Why?

Hey, thank you for the ask! You're very interactive :)

I think it's pretty clear who I'm into based off of what I post: mainly Dick Grayson/Nightwing and the rest of the Batfam. I've loved Batman since I was young, and since I wasn't exposed to much comic material, I grew up with looking at posters and watching the Dark Knight trilogy and other animated movies as my main source of material to base my favoritism off of. My obsession with Batman became sort of a joke in my family, as they would get me things like ornanments and funny cards with the caped crusader on them.

But honestly? I have no idea why I liked him so much when I was younger. Looking back, I'm 70% confident it was because I had this weird hate boner for Superman and I was in this darker edgy phase, so sunshine and rainbows wasn't my thing. Batman brought out that more gruesome, edgy, and gritty aspect of superheroes that I really liked; up until I turned about 13, I had no idea most superheroes came to be from tragic backstories, and I think we can all agree Batman's is one of the mos popular, so that's why I originally thought his story was the most intriguing. From my pea brain sized mind many years back, I saw Superman as this overpowered (which he still is), happy, and kind of stupid superhero where he always saved the day, everybody loved him, and was just this ray of light and smiles. I wanted to be "not like other girls" and developed a weird hate for Superman (I don't anymore, just to clarify, I freakin love Sups now) and an obsession for all things Batman.

Now that I have more material and the internet to research and learn more about DC characters, Dick Grayson has come to be my favorite hero. Since I've gotten over my edgy phase and my strange anger for Superman, I see Dick as a mixture of both. He's the quintessential hero in my eyes, and because he's one of the oldest superheroes created by DC (meaning been around the longest) there's so much history and lore about him and his connections to others.

I watched Teen Titans and Young Justice growing up, and those were my main source material for who Dick Grayson was as a person and as Robin. TT Robin was edgy in a way that made you realize that this wasn't a game for him and that he isn't always this happy and smiling leader. Actually, TT Robin had some serious issues that I feel like don't get talked about a lot, but that's for another day. TT was also the set up for my immense apprecition for Dick/Kory. Freakin love them as fumbling teenagers in cartoon, and love them as sensible adults in the comics. Not going to lie, I had the fattest crush on YJ Robin/Nightwing; he could literally do everything and was so cool under pressure. YJ did a good job of showing how intelligent and gifted Dick was, whilst also showing his stuggle of living up to the Batman mantle and how much pressure he was constantly under to perform with perfection. YJ was also where I fell in love with the couple of Wally West/Artemis Crock. Wally was hilariously goofy, and an awesome boyfriend in s2. Artemis was a badass who used archery as her main fighting style, and it was so wonderful to see an asian on screen. I myself am asian and dabble in archery, so I felt a connection of sorts to her character.

There was also the Justice League cartoon, which aired in 2001, and I'll say this right now: if you have not watched it, please, please, please go watch it. It really gets in depth with its characters and makes them feel real and not just 2D people on screen. It introduced me to a likeable Wonder Woman (I still have issues with her in other forms of media, as I feel like DC has done the same thing to her as Marvel has done to Carol Danvers) and made me like the calmer, less depressed Batman. The Batman in JLA was willing to talk things out, and the interactions between characters was superb.

All in all, I'd say my top favorite characters are Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Wally West, and Kory/Starfire.